


and now that we're out in the open

by orphan_account



Category: I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5236949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't have it in him to remake the world twice-over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and now that we're out in the open

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I decided to fix the ending for myself and the bae. ;)

**Act I**

**A City in Flames**

Noah feels a memory replaying in the back of his mind, a side effect of his dreams always bleeding into his waking hours, but feels it drown under the burning of something sensational in his mind. The lights make him almost upturn the house looking for a pencil or pen or a marker or _something_ to draw with. You’d think no one in the Ravens household knew how to write.

No one in the crowd stops him when he finally _does_ find a kiddy pack of multicolored chalk, or when he walks out the front door and forgets to close it behind him in favor of dropping to his knees on the sidewalk and scraping wide circles in the dark.

It gets cold about thirty seconds into the endeavor but Noah needs to get this all down in one go or it’ll never come out right. He didn’t even grab shoes; his bare toes and knees start to blister before Noah even gives his work actual shape and substance, but he doesn’t let up. It’s like someone’s helping him do this, walking him through the piece, keeping him from needing to get up and going back to sleep. _Mom_ , he thinks for a whole second, and then keeps drawing.

The white chalk breaks under his grip twice. He shaves one half down until he’s scraping away at a fingertip, and then starts working down the second one. The muse has possessed him. He hasn’t picked up something to draw with in months and here it comes, a slap in the form of some shitty acid tabs dragging him to his knees in the driveway of a party.

He gets down two bare silhouettes, one almost engulfing the other, before accidentally running a hand over the smaller one and smudging a line across him, like a slash. _Cross out the wrong answers_ , his teachers always say, _it helps show you the right ones more clearly._ The ground vibrates with a song change inside, the beat changing the outlook of the drawing. He runs out of white trying to fix his mistake.

Jude finds out by Tuesday, as in, she finds out hours after Noah gets home and collapses in bed, the sky already brightening with the start of a new day. She bursts into his room – thank God he doesn’t keep much in here anymore – and shakes him awake to shove her phone under his nose. “You went to Zephyr’s party?” She demands, like the picture of Noah sitting on her ex-crush’s shoulders with a _World’s Best Mom_ mug in his hands isn’t proof enough.

But he doesn’t have enough tact running on three hours of sleep with a massive hangover and the after effect of experimentation no one can _ever_ know about, so out flies a mumbled _no_ before he rolls over and buries his face back into his pillow.

 _“Noah,_ ” Jude says, in the way that mom used to make it clear she was disappointed, “don’t you have a track meet coming up? You shouldn’t be going off and—” she lowers her voice, “—getting _drunk_ when you could get penalized for that kind of thing.”

Noah makes a noise of affirmation. He’s wide-awake now, if in a little pain by being so, but he doesn’t want to deal with having a conversation with her this early in the morning, when he doesn’t have full control of the brain-mouth filter he’s spent years building for exactly these moments.

She waits by his bedside for a few more seconds before tossing him a goodbye and shutting the door behind her, probably meeting up with Oscar for a ride to CSA. Noah counts to ten before rolling out of bed and talking himself into taking a shower, pulling on running shorts, and jogging his way up to the Raven’s porch.

Noah’s never taken anything stronger than a blunt, so dealing with the after effects of LSD is a foreign concept. Everything seems too bright, especially the sky, but he doesn’t feel tired when his legs pump the uphill stretch. His throat is dry, and his head feels like it wants to just loll to the side, but there’s no headache as a result; _that,_ he can attribute to the vodka stash the Ravens failed to hide from their kids.

He usually picks up Heather on his way to morning practice, but he’s a little early today, so she isn’t on the porch swing when he gets there. The one who answers the door is Zephyr instead, halfway through an apple and holding a bag of ice to the side of his head.

“Hey, Noah,” He greets, leaving the door for Noah to follow. They’re on more than acquaintance terms now that Zephyr’s dad married Heather’s mom, inadvertently putting them in the same social circles. Zephyr shows up to the track meets, and Noah gets invited to all of his parties, like the one he threw last night. “You here to pick up Heather?”

Noah nods. Zephyr tosses him an apple on his way to the stairs. “It’ll get rid of that weird feeling in your throat,” he promises like he’s the prime expert of dealing with substances before he jogs up the steps, three-at-a-time. Noah hears him sing Heather’s name, accompanied by a door slamming open and a loud groan. They get along well for a couple-months-together siblings. Noah’s almost jealous.

“She’ll be down in a sec,” Zephyr says, plopping down on the couch beside Noah and finishing off his apple. Noah watches him from the side; Zephyr doesn’t seem to mind. It doesn’t feel like Zephyr minds Noah at all, actually, not since summer. Where before, when they didn’t even spare each other a passing glance, Zephyr now goes out of his way to give Noah rides home and invite him inside for breakfast. Noah would question it, except for that he thinks its one of the good things about his life right now.

Besides that, Zephyr was the first person to find out about Noah’s Thing. And, somehow, was also the first person to keep it a secret. Noah doesn’t know if he should ever bring it up with the intention to thank him – because that wouldn’t be the most awkward thing in the world – but he always feels more than a little relieved when one of the Ravens makes a joke about him getting laid or something in the kitchen and he doesn’t have to immediately _deny deny laugh deny._

Like Zephyr said, the apple gets rid of the weirdness in Noah’s throat just as Heather strolls into the kitchen, already dressed for a good morning run. She grabs a banana and stands by the couch while tying up her hair into a tight ponytail. “I didn’t even know you could draw,” she says.

Noah blinks up at her. His throat feels like it’s closing up again. “What?”

“ _Dude,_ yeah,” Zephyr nudges his leg, “You _eviscerated_ our chalk, working out there on the street. Explains why your knees look like shit, because you were out there for a good couple of hours.”

When they get started on their way to Roosevelt, Heather points out the leftovers of what was probably once a great outline of a woman, washed away by sprinkler water in the night. The sight of it satisfies him, somehow. The world of his mind had been set ablaze, but now, it feels like he’s been doused. And so easily, too; he wishes he could do the same to everything else he’s made.

“There was a whole crowd watching you,” she explains, so clearly, she probably didn’t take or drink anything at all, “and you were just – in the _zone._ ” Of course she _talks_ like her stepbrother too, now. It’s crazy how much they’ve rubbed off on each other.

They make it to school in time for relays, and the party is forgotten.

 

 

**Act II**

**A Boy by a Window**  

Noah doesn’t know what Jude’s beef is with Zephyr – if he’s being honest with himself, he can guess – but there are only so many ways to avoid someone you have to see every business day, especially when your sister won’t tell you the reason you can’t talk to said person.

Noah tunes her out about a quarter of the way through her rant and focuses on his cereal and her hair, which she’s growing out again. They’re the same in that aspect, he’d like to say, but it feels more like she’s becoming her old self again while Noah is failing to care about where he falls on the then-versus-now spectrum.

Someone yanks him back to reality with a grip on his shoulder; he resists the urge to reflexively smack Oscar’s hand away. “You alright there?” Oscar asks, already losing the sharpness of his accent. It dulls his colors a little, down from the dark purple he used to be and brightening more with exposure to Jude’s endless barrage of yellow. When Noah nods, the two of them kiss, and it’s like staring straight at the sun.

They notice him again when Noah clatters his bowl and spoon into the sink and washes his hands. “Leaving already?” Jude asks, not even bothering to hide excitement in her voice. Every Wednesday morning, when Noah’s classes don’t start until 10:30, she hopes that he’s going to work on his mural. He knows because the last time he went, just two days after he’d told her about it, he’d seen her car pulling away from the curb as he’d finished. And he regretted giving away that private part of him _completely._

“Yeah,” He doesn’t stop to look at her when shoving his feet into his shoes and leaning against the doorway to fix them on.

“You’re always running,” Oscar says, even though he doesn’t know the least of it; Heather will never, ever let him take a break from the exercise. “You must really love sports, yeah?”

Noah could laugh, and he almost does, but the irony is just punctuated even more when Jude pipes up, “He used to hate it, but I think it might have been his true calling all along.” They both laugh, and then kiss again, like they can’t keep their hands (or mouths) off each other. Noah colors them in his mind’s eye with frustration and annoyance, and doesn’t say goodbye on his way out the door.

It’s not anywhere near the end of the day’s gifts to Noah, not even close; when he gets back in the evening after late practice, the table’s set for five and he can hear voices coming from the dining room. Noah stands by the kitchen door, just out of sight, and listens for whom their guests are.

He doesn’t have to wait long to find out. Jude makes some kind of joke – an art joke, probably, that Noah won’t get – and the room bursts into laughs. There’s Oscar, clear cut and so obviously happy, in synch with Jude and dad. And then there’s a low timbre Noah doesn’t recognize until the man starts talking.

“Isn’t it already late in the evening?” Guillermo Garcia asks the rest of the group, probably looking out the window towards the beaches. “I am wondering when Noah will be back.”

“Yeah,” Jude says, also sounding a little confused. “I can call him—” a chair creaks, like she’s standing up and heading towards the kitchen phone, but before Noah can be discovered, Oscar steps in.

“Why don’t we give it a few more minutes and then call him? Sometimes his practices run until six, right?”

Noah decides not to push his luck any longer and quietly makes his way out the front of the house, then breaks into a sprint as far away from the living room as his legs can carry him. He stops only for a single break, when his phone rings.

“Hey, Jude,” Noah says, doesn’t sing, because it’s been years since he’s even wanted to, “Practice is running late. You go ahead and start on dinner without me.”

“ _Noah,_ ” She says, in that same disappointed tone. Noah counts to five in his head as she talks. “ _We had a surprise for you. Are you sure you can’t make it in, maybe, a half an hour or so—_ ”

“With the meet coming up and everything,” Noah says, and Jude sighs and concedes. Sometimes he still surprises himself with how well he can lie his way through living with his family. Now that they’ve all come to terms with mom, it’s like no more problems are supposed to exist. Noah’s fine with that kind of thinking, because that’s all it is – _thinking._ He can live the truth out alone. He’s done it before.

Mr. and Mrs. Raven are still on their vacation to who knows where, so the door is unlocked for Noah to walk in and lie down on the couch in his track clothes and will himself to fall asleep. Heather should be home soon, and Zephyr not long after that, so the empty house won’t be empty for long. It’s amazing how, even like this, it feels more full than Noah’s own.

“ _God,_ ” Noah mutters, and then buries himself deeper into the plush couch. When he can’t sleep at home, he comes here and finds solace in the couch that’s starting to smell more and more like apples everyday that the family reiterates their obsession with the fruit. It’s comforting in the way everything about home is _not_ : people like this couch. They use it for its purpose and for other purposes as well, and even though it’s starting to droop it’s still being lovingly abused. It holds no painful memories, or nostalgic smells, or stains of tears. He can’t paint anything at home in that kind of picture.

Instead of sleeping, because that doesn’t seem to be A Thing on today’s possible agenda, Noah blinks up at the ceiling and lets himself sink into the softness beneath him. The invisible museum’s always there, at least, even when it feels like Noah can’t summon the muse, when it feels like he’s been locked out of his own mind and has to peer in through the windows to remember who he is.

(But he always remembers. That has to count for something.)

He must fall asleep at some point because when he wakes up, there’s a plastic-wrapped dinner on the coffee table and a blanket thrown over his shoulders. His phone reads 01:43 with about seven hundred notifications and he doesn’t feel like checking them, so he doesn’t. He eats – Heather is a surprisingly good cook – and goes back to sleep, and doesn’t have to do any painting to get to that point.

 

 

**Act III**

**A Bird Without Breath**

He has not only The Double Team, but also the Extra to look out for when he gets home. They’re on him immediately, Dad and Jude and Oscar, all ready to leave the house but clearly waiting for someone. Noah doesn’t even get his shoes off before Dad steps up to him with a single, _“Son._ ”

Noah stands to attention immediately, shoes be damned. “Sir,” he answers, waiting for the lashing.

“We called and texted, and you didn’t pick up,” Jude says for him, fixing him with a glare. There’s no worry there anymore; ever since it became clear Noah spent more time at parties than on his art, Jude stopped being worried/happy/anything but annoyed by his late night detours. “And Guillermo waited as long as he could to see you. He was all but falling asleep when he left.”

Noah shrugs. “I didn’t know he was here.” A lie, again. Noah calls himself out on these things more than anyone else ever will. _Guillermo waited for him_ – he tries not to make a face, even though he feels like he could be sick. He doesn’t want to talk to him. He doesn’t want to look at him. Once, twice, three times was enough, and Noah _cannot do it again._

“Was a shit move though,” Oscar points out, like an older brother Noah doesn’t have the patience to handle yet. A friend, cool, his sister’s boyfriend, okay, but he doesn’t need another goddamn keeper. All of this, Noah doesn’t say.

Instead, he says, “Sorry,” and locks himself in his room. He doesn’t go to morning practice, or school, or afterschool practice, and just paints as much as he can for as long as his mind will allow, and the second he hears a car pull into the driveway he’s out the window and heading for the beach.

The beach, because why would Noah be there? He doesn’t jump cliffs anymore. He never swam, never learned to surf, not like Jude did, and never had any business at the Spot when he usually has a place at the parties people love to go to.

There are so many people here already, excited for the end of the week, huddles of kids crowded in circles of surfers or hornets or laughing crowds with billows of smoke above their heads. Most of them recognize Noah, star sprinter, as he makes his way to the big drop.

He sits on the end and starts painting the water as it should look like. The waves stack high, higher than the cliff he’s sitting on, and pulse with the music Noah can here coming from back at the Spot. At least someone down there has taste, if not in drinks then in music.

There are faces in the surf that Noah doesn’t recognize as he makes them up on the spot, bright-eyed women laughing as they crash into the waves, strong-jawed boys curling up for the break of the riptide against the rocks. They call for him as they’re created.

Noah’s always wished he could paint himself a different shape, or color, or size, or thing, or place. Noah’s always wished he could paint himself _different_ , and if the colors didn’t fit together on the canvas, he could wash them off and start anew. When his paintings call him, they call with the promise of everything he’s ever wanted, and every single time they do he has to think long and hard about why _no_ is the right answer.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, _Dad,_ and then a couple moments later, _Jude._ Then _Jude_ again, and Noah sets his phone on the ground beside him. Really, there’s no point in him even having a phone, because he can run to everywhere he needs to go, and he hates having to reply immediately to every whim his family acts on.

Below him the tide curls around and crashes against the rocks in futile attempts to break them down. They stop a short way away from the edge Noah’s on, so with his sprint and long jump numbers, he can easily clear them without impaling himself. It’s a split second decision. He takes off his shoes.

Jude’s voice floods into his brain. _You promised,_ she’s saying, even though she’s never said that to him before. _You promised me you wouldn’t jump again._ Hate to break it to you, Jude, but that wasn’t the first or last lie Noah’s ever told you.

His phone vibrates again and he checks it, for some strange reason, and sees a text from Heather.

 _Curry tonight, if you’re down._ Attached is a picture of her and her brother crying while chopping onions. It makes him smile. The feeling, though not foreign, is definitely not one he’s gotten used to. He sets the phone down by his shoes and stands to take a few steps away from the edge.

 _Don’t jump,_ someone says. Or doesn’t say, really, Noah has no idea. He doesn’t wait to hear it again, though, before running and launching himself into the air, and feeling his heart stop and the wind rush into blissful silence before he begins to fall.

No one catches him here. It’s just him and the wind, and the water that’s coming up to meet him, his hair long enough to whip at his face and the air cold enough to sting at his cheeks and the icy, freezing water splashing onto him before he’s swallowed by it. And he doesn’t slow before it happens.

This is what Jude deprived him from, that last time. Or saved him from. There are two sides to every story, and Noah’s has always been one of horrible misfortune. He just wants to fall into the water and finally, finally swim down. The fall should have killed him, but it didn’t. The cold should have killed him, but it didn’t. The water should do the goddamn trick, if nothing else.

He starts painting to bide his time.

 

 

**Act IV**

**A Door with No Lock**  

He steps into the Ravens’ house, soaking wet with shoes in one hand and phone in the other. “I’m so down,” he says, before Heather throws him a towel and orders him to go change into some of Zephyr’s dry clothes. Noah throws his track clothes in the trash and leaves his phone on the bathroom counter before coming down the stairs in clothes a little too small for him.

“It’ll do,” Heather says, stirring the pot with vigor. “Not like you ever fit into your own clothes, anyway.”

“Your sister came by earlier, looking for you,” Zephyr says, pulling out clean plates from one of the cabinets. “She said you skipped school or something?”

“Skipped practice, too,” Heather adds, then pauses in her stirring. She looks right at Noah, like something makes sense to her, and he’s so caught off-guard that he can’t look away. But just as soon as she connects the dots with the day and the wet clothes, she shakes her head. “But I’m glad you’re here now,” she says. “For dinner.”

“Same,” Noah says. “I can’t miss curry night for anything.” He lies on the couch and paints until they call him to come eat.


End file.
